Firefox OS released

Note: this is a recycled, unpublished post form July, 2013, when the first Firefox OS phone was released. Below are my personal reflections on the Firefox OS project upon the release.

Mozilla Taiwan Office

Within a relatively short time, Mozilla managed to open up an Taipei office with relative large operation, signed deals with various partners, and ship the first version of Firefox OS.

To me personally, this is a challenging yet exciting work. I would imagine the description to be true for Mozilla as whole as well. The office in Taipei grows tenfold; MoCo as whole grows as well to accommodated the new project (I’ve already lost counts on that, as always). I started as one junior developer working on the code base with merely a few checked-ins, to be a people manager leading the front-end team in Taipei and one of the tech leads that struggle to involve every aspect of a code base involves multiple teams within Mozilla and external teams from many of our partners (note that Taipei front-end devs have since spilt into two teams and we have another capable manager on another team). It’s a learning process to work with project of this size — for Mozilla, product-wise, to enter a new market, to coordinate with partners on their launch dates and feature sets — is new too.

Firefox OS

Nonetheless we made it. I don’t feel particularly proud for the release. There were many decisions made that should have been made differently, although I am certain that everyone have made the best decision with information at hand. I am also in no position to judge a past decision if all the information is still not available to me.

There are still many, many work to be done here.

經驗分享:用 Javascript 實作注音輸入法

這是本日稍早在 COSCUP 2013 的演講「經驗分享:用 Javascript 實作注音輸入法」的投影片。相關連結:

希望大家滿意今天的分享。接下來就是要找時間把繼續把這個改版完成了 …

Gaia, OS shell in a <html>

This is the talk I gave in MozCamp Asia 2012. I talked about how the shell of Firefox OS (codenamed Gaia) is engineered and communicate with the rest of the operating system.

One thing to note is that you are not required to know anything mentioned in this slide to create a website or a web application, or even an Open Web Application; Gaia, or Firefox OS, should be just another browser for you. Only if you want to help out the roll out of Firefox OS v1, or hack the shell to design your own phone, you would need to know how Gaia works. To test your app on a simulated phone, check out r2d2b2g.

Having OS shells and application platforms engineered entirely with web technologies bring tremendous opportunities to the web developers. Web is already a dynamic visual playground — with layouts being invented everyday, from infinite scroll to Mansonry; imaging when these potential being unleashed to the web — Firefox OS is the platform doing that. Join us.